We don't know why she's claiming assault. All we know is she claimed assault and the screwy Cali law that says a 15 yo can't give consent to another 15 yo allows that, among other possible reasons. I may be wrong but since one of the alleged assaulters (is that a word?) only got probation for the assault charge, I'm coming to the conclusion that those who determined probation was a just punishment for the "crime" didn't think it was any kind of real sexual assault so they gave him the lightest possible sentence based on that technicality in the law.
This conclusion doesn't make sense based on the information we have. Neither of the boys were charged with assault. California almost never pursues the charge for that for teenagers having consensual sex. Similarly, there are 13 states where sodomy is illegal, but they don't go around arresting all the gay guys. The boy's punishment had nothing to do with assault whatsoever, because the girl didn't make the assault claim until 2019 (possibly 2018 privately), 2 years after the video was taken, and it apparently wasn't clear on the video that it was assault (by normal laws). There was no technicality of the law or any of that, because it wasn't claimed until recently. The punishment was "for distribution of child pornography," not for assault.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/University-of-Nebraska-Football-Player-Maurice-Washington-Faces-Revenge-Porn-Child-Porn-Charges-Over-Video-of-Bay-Area-Teen-505666711.html?akmobile=o
Here is another clear sign the mention of assault has nothing to do with their ages. There's no indication anywhere in the article that the accusation was due to age. It wasn't considered sexual assault because she didn't report it as such (and it apparently wasn't obvious in the video).
Although she did not report the incident as a rape at the time because she says she felt ashamed, Taylor told NBC Bay Area the video depicts a sexual assault, not a consensual sex act.
The only reason this law was ever brought up is because we were arguing some nuance or another and I googled it and we were amazed it's the law. That's literally the only reason anyone started talking about it. It didn't come from any information about Washington or the girl or anything else related to this story.
It would be really beneficial if they wouldn't lump such diverse possibilities as the same sexual assault charge. It feels like the same issue is allowing them to call what MW allegedly did as child porn or revenge porn. I don't think the word "porn" belongs in any possibility of what MW may have done. Revenge Harassment (better) but child porn is just wrong imo considering they are effectively the same age and dated each other.
Nobody is lumping anything. I'm not sure what you're talking about there. She says she was raped. It's extremely unlikely she's just talking about kids having sex with each other. The fact that no mention of sexual assault was made until 2018/2019 makes that pretty clear.
I'm really not sure why you're saying it's not porn. It's people having sex in a video. What else would it be? There's nothing wrong with calling it revenge porn if he was trying to hurt her with it. That's what the accusation is about for that part. But even with that charge he's guilty of lesser things than the real purpose of that law. The purpose of that law is to prevent people from doing what the charged boy did, which is disseminate video to
other people. There are other laws to prevent sending videos to the victim as a threat, but that's blackmail and he's not being accused of that. With child porn, it has connotations that don't apply in this case. It still is child porn by definition and it's illegal for anyone of any age to possess it. But the details of the case are not explained away by just stating "child porn" over and over like some have been doing.
To be honest, it just seems like it was consensual and not a thing until the video got out and her parents saw it. Then she claims it was assault (or maybe her parents claimed it was assault based on the technicality in the law). And now they are doing the same thing with these ancillary changes against MW. Maybe I'm too used to seeing parents who cannot accept certain realities about their own children. I've seen so much of that it likely is preventing me from interpreting this any other way.
On this we agree. It's hard for me not to imagine this girl didn't want to admit to her parents that she was willing, because that's worse to her than the alternative. Also, the video doesn't seem to corroborate what she's saying. As has been discussed a lot, it can have been sexual assault even if no one watching the video came to that conclusion, but it means the video doesn't help her case.
